Monday May 25th 2026
Laura Moodie, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Green Party writes her first monthly column for Midlothian View
Standing in that hall, watching the numbers come in, knowing that something genuinely historic was unfolding – not just for me, but for the Scottish Greens across the country – was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. Fifteen Green MSPs. Fifteen. If you’d said that to a party activist even five years ago, they’d have laughed and made you a cup of tea and gently suggested you sit down.
For South Scotland specifically, this moment carries extra weight. It has been more than two decades since this region last sent a Scottish Green to Holyrood. Twenty-three years of elections, of activists leafleting from Penicuick to Portpatrick, of candidates doing their best on tight budgets and tighter timescales, of voters across the Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire and Midlothian marking that box in hope more than expectation. Those people – the volunteers, the local campaigners, the patient faithful – deserve enormous credit. This seat belongs to them as much as it does to me.
What’s changed? Partly the times. The climate emergency has moved from the margins to the mainstream. The cost-of-living crisis has made people ask harder questions about who our economy is working for. But the party itself has changed too – grown in seriousness, in depth, in the quality of its people and its policies. The result on election night wasn’t a fluke. It was twenty years of painstaking work finally coming good.
And now the real work begins – which is both thrilling and slightly terrifying for a political newcomer. The first few weeks in any new job involve a lot of practical decisions. Recruiting staff who know the region, who understand rural casework as readily as urban issues, who can handle a constituent’s housing crisis with the same care as a complex planning appeal – that’s not straightforward.
Getting the portfolio responsibilities right within our expanded group matters enormously too. With fifteen voices, we have an opportunity to be heard across every brief: health, education, transport, the economy, rural affairs. We want to use that wisely.
Then there’s the casework. I wasn’t quite prepared for the volume, I’ll admit. Within days of the result, my inbox was filled with messages from right across this enormous region – families worried about rural bus cuts, communities frustrated by planning decisions, individuals navigating benefits systems that too often seem designed to exhaust rather than help. Every one of those messages represents a real person, a real problem. Answering them properly will be the daily discipline that keeps all the grand politics grounded in reality.
If you’re reading this in Midlothian and you need help, please do get in touch. I am here, I am listening, and after twenty years, I am not going anywhere.
Laura Moodie is the newly elected Scottish Green MSP for the South Scotland region and she will be writing a regular column for Midlothian View. You can contact her office at [email protected]
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